The dean of the University of Colorado's business school, who came under fire during a recent employment review for his treatment of women, was the subject of two federal gender-discrimination complaints last year.

One of those cases was dismissed and the other is still pending. Both women have since resigned their positions in the Leeds School of Business.

Though five of eight members on the committee tasked with summarizing faculty feedback on Ikenberry said they felt he was not meeting the expectations of the job, CU's provost reappointed Ikenberry to another five-year term.

The documents provided by the university shed more light on the climate within the business college. One assistant dean warned Ikenberry in 2014 of a "staff implosion" and forwarded a number of complaints from women in the college to CU's Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance, which investigates discrimination and harassment.

Ikenberry was advised in the spring of 2015 on how to behave appropriately in the workplace as part of an informal resolution to a complaint made by employee Lauren Ramsay.

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Shortly after that, Ramsay, who served as the faculty director of the Leeds Residential Academic Program and as a management and entrepreneurship instructor, filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

That May 2015 complaint alleged she was paid less than her male colleagues in the Leeds School and that Ikenberry made discriminatory comments about women in the college.

She also claimed that she was removed from the faculty director role for complaining about those issues. When Ikenberry replaced Ramsay with a tenured female professor, Ramsay said she was offered two other roles, both of which she described as demotions.

Ramsay, who did not respond to interview requests this week, has since resigned from the university. Her case is still pending with the employment commission.

Tip-Arpar Karasudhi, the business school's former budget and finance director, filed a complaint with the employment commission in November 2015 claiming that she was not hired for an open position within the college because she is an Asian female.

Karasudhi's complaints were provided to CU's Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance by a supervisor in December 2014, along with complaints "by a number of female Leeds employees indicating that the dean did not treat them fairly," according to documents provided to the commission.

The employment commission dismissed Karasudhi's complaint in April. CU attorneys said this month that they had not been notified of any lawsuit brought by Karasudhi.

Karasudhi, who resigned from the university in April, declined to answer questions for this story.

Open, inclusive environment

Zeel Patel, a spokeswoman for the Leeds School of Business, said Ikenberry could not discuss the employment commission cases because of the legal nature of the complaints.

"While I am not able to comment on specific EEOC or personnel matters, what I can share with you is that I, along with my team, remain committed to fostering an open and inclusive working environment that enables all students, staff and faculty to thrive at Leeds," Ikenberry said in a statement emailed by Patel.

CU's provost — Ikenberry's supervisor — has stood behind the dean since the faculty review of his performance was made public earlier this summer.

"I had numerous statements from faculty and his advisory board suggesting that he's the best dean we've had in a decade or more," Provost Russ Moore said in early July.

In an email sent to faculty, Moore pointed out that Ikenberry is the first business dean to be reappointed in 30 years.

Indeed, it appears from Ikenberry's faculty review that a number of professors feel he is doing a good job as dean.

"Being a dean is not an easy job," one respondent wrote. "Ikenberry has shown strong leadership and has been moving the business school in the right direction since his arrival."

In both cases, lawyers defended Ikenberry and other business school employees to the employment commission.

The open assistant dean of administration position that Karasudhi applied for was filled by an external female candidate, according to CU's response to the complaint. Karasudhi was not asked to continue the interview process because she did not perform as well as other candidates during a preliminary video interview, according to CU lawyers.

The woman who was eventually hired for the position, Stephanie Gillin, scored the highest out of 12 applicants on the video interview. Karasudhi received the second lowest score.

"The university has legitimate, nondiscriminatory and non-pretextual reasons for its employment decision with respect to Karasudhi," wrote Elvira Strehle-Henson, the top lawyer on the Boulder campus.

CU had a similar response to the complaint filed by Ramsay and said that Ikenberry ended her faculty director appointment because he wanted to reorganize the residential academic program and she was not a tenured professor.

'Battered wives situation'

Formal complaints aside, an email sent to CU's Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance provides a window into the experiences of some women working in the business school.

Rick Johnson, then-assistant dean of administration for Leeds, alerted the equity and compliance office in December 2014 to a number of unsolicited conversations he had with women about the work environment in the college.

Johnson left Leeds in 2015 for a position at Laramie County Community College in Wyoming.

One woman described working for Ikenberry as being "like a battered wives situation," according to Johnson's email. She said the dean created and exacerbated a fear-based culture, especially for women.

She told Johnson that the dean is "patronizing and oppressive toward females, especially if you are a strong-willed woman."

When four female staff members approached Ikenberry about their plans to improve staff morale, Johnson wrote, they claimed that Ikenberry belittled and discounted their ideas.

Johnson, who spoke with the Daily Camera from Wyoming this week, said "at least a dozen" female employees came to him to discuss issues they were having with the college's leadership, likely because his role included overseeing human resources functions.

"I attempted to help them and I passed the appropriate information on to the appropriate authorities all along the way," Johnson said.

At one point, Johnson and another person met with Ikenberry about tensions building exclusively among female employees.

"I confronted Dave that his leadership style is destructive for the staff, and told him that I believe I am seeing the start of a staff implosion," Johnson wrote.

Johnson crunched the numbers and found, per his calculations, that the business school had a 20.5 percent turnover rate among staff in 2014, a fact he shared with CU officials.

The number of female staff members who resigned from Leeds grew each year between 2011 and 2014. In 2011, five female staffers resigned. The number grew to nine in 2012, to 10 in 2013 and to 12 in 2014.

Over the same period, no male staffers resigned in 2011, five resigned in 2012, four resigned in 2013 and four resigned in 2014.

He said he completed the analysis because he was concerned that Leeds' turnover rate was higher than it should be.

"First of all, turnover is expensive," Johnson said. "And it's costly to an organization to replace people, so you worry about it on that level, and second, turnover rates can be an indication of organizational health."

Moore, CU's provost, said some degree of turnover is common in any organization for a variety of reasons.

"That can be especially true when you have a dynamic leader bringing transformative change to a school. Some want to move in that direction and others don't," Moore said in a statement emailed by a campus spokesman. "I'm proud of Dean Ikenberry's momentum with the Leeds School, especially as it pertains to academic rankings, student satisfaction, diversity and job placement for our graduates."

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